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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24363097">Crevasse</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fewlmewn/pseuds/fewlmewn'>fewlmewn</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Original Stories [19]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood, Curses, F/M, Head Injury, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicide Attempt, Worldbuilding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 10:21:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,285</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24363097</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fewlmewn/pseuds/fewlmewn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ahkkari resorts to extreme measures to end his suffering, but finds an unlikely source of pity.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ahkkari/Rahsa, Original Female Character/Original Male Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Original Stories [19]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1043202</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Crevasse</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Heed the tags.<br/>CW: Suicide Attempt, Self-Harm</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Whip-smart. Rail-thin. <em> Three-horned </em>. Dusk-skinned. Boar-fanged.</p><p>Depth-hatched, fire-born, a gorge outlaw, a forsaken, a land’s orphan.</p><p>A devil, cursed by its own kin.</p><p>Ahkkari had heard it all.</p><p>He’d butted against the cliff face like a ram until with splintering pain the horn in the middle of his forehead broke off, flying into the ashen weeds never to be found. Blood poured down the crushed bridge of his nose, spilling into his eyes, what flowed from his nostrils pouring into his mouth in plentiful gulps. When he came to, Rahsa had bandaged his head with sticks and leather strips, fearing he’d split his skull as well. It definitely felt like it - the headache lasted for months, and every attempt to rise from the cot felt like trying to balance an overfull cup, where wine was brains, and the rim were his fragile bones. He stayed into bed after the first time Rahsa found him passed out again on his way to the outhouse.</p><p>Neither Rahsa nor her senile mother liked having an invalid in their house, soiling the bed with sick every time the sun shone wrong into his eyes, searing his sight, or with piss when he couldn’t muster the strength to ask for help to the pot. But Rahsa had been gathering steam berries that day, close to the cliffs, and it was no one’s fault his scream of pain had reached her.</p><p>He hadn’t wanted to survive it, to be perfectly honest. Overcome by rage and despair, he’d thought it an unlikely outcome to survive such a foolish attempt. In the best of cases, he’d come out the other way with two very normal-looking horns and a daring tale to tell the rest of the village. In the best of cases, he’d stop suffering. Wouldn’t return as a hero who could thwart a curse - he wouldn’t return at all, which he sincerely hoped.</p><p>In some way, he hadn’t returned. Bedridden for nearly a year in Rahsa’s and her mother’s lone hut at the fork to Yill Passway. The other dust path led to the graveyard on the mesa, of all places. Oddly convenient.</p><p>From the look in the old woman’s single black eye, she was raring to put him into the sands. It seemed even the undertaker wanted nothing to do with him.</p><p> </p><p>Rahsa had gone foraging the barren butte behind the shack for critters to grill over the flame for supper - always those naked little beasts with the long body and a longer snout that tasted like bird but felt like fire ants on your tongue and whose name he didn’t know. When she returned, she spat on a rag and cleaned the deep scar over his nose.</p><p>“It set like this. Pity. Pig-faced.”</p><p>“Thanks.”</p><p>“No need to sweeten the truth, Ahkkari. That’s you now. Deal with it.”</p><p>Long silence stretched with Rahsa's hard face but a span from his own disfigured face. He swallowed and took a deep breath, smelling the hint of steam berry in the spit leftover across his cheek. She must’ve eaten some on the way here. It smelled like ash and warm spice.</p><p>Before he could say anything, she placed a kiss on his broken nose and retreated just as quickly.</p><p>“‘s fine, I reckon,” she mumbled, making little of what she’d just done.</p><p>“What about the stump. How does it look?”</p><p>“I know I promised I’d fetch you a mirror, but I’m not gonna find one in the canyon now, am I?”</p><p>“Sorry.”</p><p>“No, I’m the one who’s sorry. You just want to know. I get it. All this trouble and not getting what you wanted? I can’t imagine how you feel.”</p><p>“And yet you know.”</p><p>She frowned, remembering past revelations he’d spilled in the daze of the ill-mixed medicine she’d attempted to give him. Too much opiates, and he’s said things neither of them wished to remember. Hurtful, sorrowful things.</p><p>“I… I just cannot do this again, even if it’s you. Promise you won’t try it again. Promise.”</p><p>He wanted to lie, but found it wasn’t needed.</p><p>“I promise,” a weight lifted from his chest. “Now, can you tell me how it looks.”</p><p>“It’s still there,” she shrugged, “I filed down as much as I could while you were out. I could’ve done more if you hadn’t whined the entire time you were awake. I reckon with some work you might shave it off.” <em> Now that the bulk of it is gone </em> went unspoken. “A blacksmith ought to know how to deal with it. Perhaps. Not here, though. I’m… not sure anyone in the village would get their hands on it, still. Sorry.”</p><p>It was his time to shrug, realizing how what he’d done could hardly change the village’s point of view, despite the long months that had passed since his attempt at normalcy.</p><p>“So, still three-horned, you’re saying.”</p><p>“Hmm, two-and-a-half. You might be able to cover it with hair-”</p><p>“Rahsa,” he interrupted, “you know it won’t grow.” Yet another way he felt like a curse had been cast upon him.</p><p>“Give it time.”</p><p>“No. It’s not the scars. It’s me.”</p><p>She swore something unintelligible but unmistakably in the Red Tongue of the canyon - not at him, but at the concept of him being cursed, most likely.</p><p>“Shh, your mother’ll hear you.” he smiled a crooked, pained smile. Almost a grimace. The old woman had since forgotten the common speech spoken in larger towns and cities, having learned it as a young woman but abandoning it in her old age. Red sat more comfortably on her forked tongue, syllables flowing without the need to overthink them. Often to a fault, if her chastising Ahkkari or her own daughter was anything to go by.</p><p>“She doesn’t know these words. They are new. A young man from upside the canyon taught them to the children in the village a while back, and they’d been hurling swears at each other when I went for grain and goat milk. I’ll teach them to you.”</p><p>“Because that’s going to make me more popular?”</p><p>“It might.”</p><p> </p><p>At the turn of the year, after abundant bedrest and extreme caution, once the wounds had all healed completely, Ahkkari had almost gotten around to the idea of travelling with Rahsa to the Capital, if he truly was sure to be cursed, and if he truly intended to ask the Oracle to lift it.</p><p>Rahsa seemed irritated by the prospect she herself had suggested of chaperoning the poor sod, but her voice betrayed caring and affection. For his part, Ahkkari had gently tried to dissuade her, but the more she insisted it was a bother, the more she sounded convinced she had to do it.</p><p>One morning, Rahsa woke only to find her mother cold and stiff in her bed. Supine and curled like a scorpion’s tail. When she cried, it wasn’t out of grief, but out of an obligation to mourn the old woman.</p><p>Without saying a word to Ahkkari, she ventured into the village to give the announcement, and when she returned she was wearing black and speaking Red.</p><p>“<b>I’m afraid I cannot go through with our plan. You’ll have to see the Oracle by yourself. I must stay here and be the undertaker now.</b> Try not to get killed, and remember that you promised not to kill yourself, either.”</p><p>He nodded, his forehead dotted by cold sweat, and it felt like the droplets filled his eyes, as well.</p><p>He gathered his pack and took the right-most path to Yill Passway to the South, picking steam berries along the way as far as they grew.</p><p>When the bushes stopped, he sat on the grass-lined road with his handful of dawn-hued fruits, and wept.</p><p> </p>
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